Grabbing Power, by Tanya Kerssen

Wed, 12/19/2012 - 11:05 — AP

Tireless solidarity worker Tanya Kersson now has a new book out. I've ordered my copy. Click the image below to buy yours:

About
New from Food First Books: In 2009, Honduran elites financed a coup to grab land and power. The peasants of the Aguán Valley are fighting to grab it back...for their families, local economies and the future of democracy.

Description
Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras, Food FIrst Books, February 2013. Now available for pre-order at https://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/4079

“If you want a deeper understanding of the global land grab emergency,
you can’t do better than this book. Through meticulous research, unapologetic attention to history, and crackling critique, it lays bare the truth: land grabbing is not just a new colonialism. It is a natural offshoot
of 90s-style, triumphal neoliberalism. This book reminds us not just why, but what we fight.” — Naomi Klein (author, The Shock Doctrine) and Avi Lewis (director, The Take)

Grabbing Power outlines the history of agribusiness in Northern Honduras—from the United Fruit Company’s dominance in the 20th century to the rise of a powerful class of domestic elites in the 1980s and 90s including the brutal landowner Miguel Facussé, also known as the “oil palm grower of death.” The power of these elites is bolstered by international aid, “green” capitalism, a corrupt media, and US-funded militarization in the name of a tragic War on Drugs.

This book also tells the story of the fierce resistance of Aguán peasants and Afro-indigenous communities in northern Honduras, and their fight for the democratization of land, food and political power. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter observes, “With this chilling description of the impacts in Honduras of the new scramble towards land and resources, Tanya Kerssen gives faces, and voices, to what is all too often described through statistics and trends—an anonymization that is also a silencing. This is required reading for those who wish to understand land grabbing from the point of view of the victims.”